Pakistan: After bill against forced conversion rejected, 38 cases so far reported this year

After Pakistan turned down the bill on forced conversion, 38 cases of forced conversion have been reported across the country.

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• ANI
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• Lahore
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• Updated: 22-11-2021

Image Credit: ANI

• Country:
• Pakistan

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After Pakistan turned down the bill on forced conversion, 38 cases of forced conversion have been reported across the country. The Pakistan parliamentary committee in October had rejected the anti-forced conversion bill amid protest from the lawmakers belonging to minority communities in the country.

Young people from minority communities are generally kidnapped in broad daylight and forcibly converted to Islam. Meanwhile, Muslim members had taken the stance that forced conversion was not a problem in Pakistan. This was observed by Peter Jacob, a long-time activist for the rights of the minorities and Director Centre for Social Justice, in a session on the theme Freedom of Religion and Belief titled Minorities under Threat - Forced conversions and Marriages at Asma Jahangir Conference, reported The News International.

The session was moderated by Farida Shaheed, Executive Director Shirkat Gah and sociologist. The other speakers at this session were Wendy Gilmour, Canadian High Commissioner to Pakistan, Kulpana Devi, Additional Advocate General of Sindh High Court and member of PPP and Dr Nasreen Rehman, economist and historian and director, National Commission on Forced Marriage (UK). The turning down of the bill on Forced Conversion by the parliamentary committee has emboldened the elements who conduct forced conversions of underage girls in an organised manner.

Jacob termed it sabotage of people's protection. He highlighted the problem of targeting young girls in particular and said the nation has been unable to find a way to address this menace because no sincere attempt has been made so far by the government to address this issue, reported The News International. "We know those who forcibly and arrogantly rejected that bill. The functional committee on human rights was turned into a standing committee which meant curtailing the powers of that committee. The parliament never discussed rights of the minorities in the twenty years that I have been observing," he lamented.

Jacob also said that the Ministry of Religious Affairs is part of the problem than the solution. Dr Ewlina Olchab, the senior researcher on All-Party Parliamentary Group and Pakistani minorities, said she has come across cases of abduction of a number of 14-15-year-old girls who are forcibly married to men much older than them. "The state must train the police to investigate such cases," she said.

Dr Ayra Indrias Patras, Assistant Professor Forman Christian College University, said, "We need to situate the problem of religious conversion of underage girls of the minority community in a society that is already riddled with socio-religious hostilities and gendered power relations. There is a thin line to substantiate whether girls are exercising their free choice to marry or are forced to religious conversion." "It is a one-way conversion of mostly girls of poor religious minorities, who marry Muslim men and convert to Islam. At times, patriarchal claims of minority communities control and curtail the independent choices of minority girls. Women of minority communities are subjected to multiple strands of marginality stemming from lower caste, class, gender and religions," she said. (ANI)

Pakistan: Hundreds of children protest in Gwadar in support of basic rights

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Balochistan | November 22, 2021 5:48:08 PM IST

In solidarity with protestors staging a sit-in against the unnecessary check posts and fishing trawlers in Gwadar district of Balochistan province, hundreds of children took to the streets on Sunday, local media reported. Carrying placards and banners inscribed with demands "Gwadar ko haq do" (Give rights to Gwadar), the children marched on various roads of the city and later joined the main sit-in, Dawn reported. Speaking on the occasion, Maulana Hidayat Ullah Baloch, who led the rally, criticised the elected representatives of Gwadar and Makran and asked them to join the sit-in or resign from the assembly as they had been elected to represent them, the Pakistani publication reported. He said the representatives who did not visit their constituency should be included in a list of missing persons. Maulana Baloch said that despite the deployment of various security agencies, hundreds of illegal trawlers were involved in illegal fishing in Balochistan's waters, depriving local fishermen of their livelihood. He asked the authorities concerned to take steps for stopping illegal fishing immediately and seal all liquor stores in the province. "Otherwise people will destroy them," Dawn reported. Further, Maulana Baloch called for the recovery of all disappeared people and said if they were involved in any crime they must be produced before a court of law. "If our demands are not met, we will continue the sit-in for 127 days in order to break the record of Imran Khan who staged his sit-in for 126 days," he said. Balochistan is a resource-rich but least developed province of Pakistan where a movement for freedom has been ongoing for the past several decades. Many Balochs believe that the region was independent before 1947 and was forcibly occupied by Pakistan. While successive governments have promised to criminalise enforced disappearance, none has taken concrete steps and the practice continues with impunity. Recently, fighting between the Pakistan security forces and Baloch insurgents have intensified in the region. In its 2020 Country Reports on Human Rights, the US State Department has highlighted significant human rights issues in Pakistan, including unlawful or arbitrary killings by the government and forced disappearance of Pashtun, Sindhi and Baloch human rights activists. (ANI)

Israel: intelligence agency was key in British decision to designate Hamas

November 22, 2021 

Pro-Palestine demonstrators hold placards during a protest against Israel's treatment of Palestinian protesters in London, UK on 15 May 2018 [Yunus Dalgic/Anadolu Agency]

November 22, 2021

Israel' domestic security agency, Shin Bet, has worked with its counterparts in Britain in order to get the government to designate Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, in its entirety as a "terrorist" group, Israeli media revealed on Sunday. Citing Channel 12 news, the Times of Israel said that several officials from Shin Bet travelled to the UK in recent weeks for this purpose.

The Israeli officials apparently provided "intelligence" on several individuals living in Britain who are, it is alleged, affiliated with Hamas and help to finance it. The designation, it is reported, will undermine the movement's activities in the UK, where it is alleged to carry out significant fundraising.

The decision to designate Hamas must be approved by parliament before it takes effect. According to the Times of Israel, it followed a face-to-face meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Britain's Boris Johnson at the climate change conference in Glasgow earlier this month.

READ: It is absurd for Britain to proscribe Hamas

Channel 12 claimed that these alleged Hamas members raise funds in Britain that are then sent to institutions in Gaza which, Israel says, are linked to the Palestinian group. Israeli intelligence officials claim that the most significant of these is the Islamic University of Gaza. Israel has bombed the university on a number of occasions, alleging that its laboratories are used to develop weapons for Hamas. This is denied by the well-respected academic institution, which has eleven faculties and more than 20,000 students, as well as connections with major universities around the world.

Critics of the designation such as journalists Yvonne Ridley and Motasem Dalloul point out that it is likely to be counterproductive because of the political importance of Hamas in occupied Palestine. The chair of the London-based Europal Forum, Zaher Birawi, told Dalloul that, "Home Secretary Priti Patel's plan to designate Hamas is intended to restrict even further the public space for expressions of solidarity with the Palestinians and their cause against the Israeli occupation."

 

Boris Johnson defends 'Peppa Pig' speech in which he quoted Lenin and compared himself to Moses

Britain’s Prime Minister lost his place in his notes and made car noises as he delivered a keynote speech to business leaders.

1 hour ago 

Image: PA Images

BRITISH PRIME MINISTER Boris Johnson stumbled through a major speech in which he lost his place in his notes, talked about a day trip to a Peppa Pig theme park and imitated a car, before insisting: “I thought it went over well.”

The UK leader’s keynote address to business leaders saw him struggle with his papers, at one point muttering “blast it” before shuffling sheets and begging the audience to “forgive me” as he tried to find the right point to resume.

The speech to the Confederation of British Industry was an attempt to set out how pursuing green policies could help in the “moral mission” to “level up” the UK.

But it risks being remembered for Johnson’s reflections on his trip to Peppa Pig World, comparisons with Moses, a reference to Lenin and the spectacle of a Prime Minister of the United Kingdom making car noises.

Following the speech in South Shields, Johnson was asked: “Is everything OK?”

He told ITV: “I think that people got the vast majority of the points I wanted to make and I thought it went over well.”

But Labour mocked Johnson online, saying “the joke’s not funny anymore”, while Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said: “Businesses are crying out for clarity. Instead, all they got was Boris Johnson rambling on about Peppa Pig.

It is a perfect metaphor for Johnson’s chaotic, incompetent Government as it trashes our economy, but it is not worthy of a British Prime Minister.

Johnson told the audience how he spent Sunday at Peppa Pig World in Hampshire, describing it as “very much my kind of place” but “they are a bit stereotypical about Daddy Pig”.

Praising the ingenuity of the private sector, Johnson said “no Whitehall civil servant could conceivably have come up with Peppa”, which had become a £6 billion global business with theme parks in the US and China.

He mimicked the sound of a roaring car as he said electric vehicles, while lacking the characteristic noise of a high-powered petrol engine, “move off the lights faster than a Ferrari”.

He quoted Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin as he said electrification will be the key to the new “green” industrial revolution.

“Lenin once said the communist revolution was Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country,” Johnson said.

The coming industrial revolution is green power plus electrification of the whole country. We are electrifying our cars, we are electrifying our rail.

The Prime Minister compared his 10-point plan for a green economy with the 10 commandments in the Bible.

It was “a new Decalogue that I produced exactly a year ago when I came down from Sinai”, he said.

The Prime Minister also defended his levelling-up agenda, following criticism of scaled-back plans for new railways in the North and Midlands.

Ministers announced last week that the eastern leg of HS2 between the Midlands and Leeds would be cut, while a promised Northern Powerhouse Rail link between Leeds and Manchester would run partly on existing tracks.

Tony Danker, director-general of the CBI, said the decision had “upset” businesses in the north of England. But Johnson defended the rail proposals, describing the Integrated Rail Plan (IRP) as “transformatory”.

Johnson, who argued that achieving his goal of addressing imbalances in the UK would help it become a bigger economy than Germany, said: “It’s a moral thing but it’s also an economic imperative.”

The British Prime Minister said there would still be “massive gains” by a mixture of investing in new lines and upgrading existing track.

“I must say that I thought, as a lesson in what happens when you tell the British people we’re investing £96 billion in the biggest railway programme for 100 years, some of the coverage was missing the point, let me put it that way,” he told the conference.

So, Birmingham to Newcastle is 40 minutes quicker under the IRP; from Newcastle to London will have 20 minutes shaved off because of the upgrades to the East Coast Mainline.

“You are mad as a railway enthusiast, which I am, to think that you always have to dig huge new trenches through virgin countryside and villages and housing estates in order to do high-speed rail.”

He added that Chancellor Rishi Sunak wanted to cut the tax burden for businesses but the Government had to be “prudent” following £407 billion of pandemic spending that had been “extremely tough for the taxpayer”.

The Prime Minister also announced in his speech that new laws will see new homes, supermarkets and workplaces compelled to install electric car charging points.

The announcement on charging points is another step towards the banning of the sale of petrol and diesel cars in the UK by 2030.

James Mancey, operations director at Paultons Park, where Peppa Pig World is based, said the attraction was “delighted” Johnson attended on Sunday.

He said: “The fact that Mr Johnson has chosen to speak at length about his visit during today’s CBI conference, positively endorsing the creativity and innovation showcased by Peppa Pig World and encouraging others to visit, is testament to the hard work of everyone at Paultons Park who create the wonderful experience our millions of guests enjoy each year.”

 

'Love It': Johnson Tells UK Business Leaders Peppa Pig World is 'Very Much My Kind of Place' - Video

6 hours ago

© REUTERS / HENRY NICHOLLS

SubscribeThe usually eloquent British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was lost for words as he was supposed to deliver a speech to the Confederation of British Industry in Port of Tyne in northern England on Monday.

Boris Johnson was frantically going through his notes and repeatedly mumbling "forgive me" before he gave a bizarre speech about Peppa Pig World to UK business leaders.

“Yesterday I went, as we all must, to Peppa Pig World. I don’t know if you’ve been to Peppa Pig World? Hands up who’s been to Peppa Pig World. I love it. Peppa Pig World is very much my kind of place: it has very safe streets, discipline in schools, heavy emphasis on mass transit systems, I notice, even if they are a bit stereotypical about Daddy Pig,” the prime minister said, stumbling over his words multiple times.

Johnson continued his perplexing monologue by telling business executives, "who would have believed that a pig that looks like a hairdryer or possibly a Picasso-like hairdryer, a pig that was rejected by the BBC, would now be exported to 180 countries with theme parks both in America and China?"

Peppa Pig World, a park based on the children’s TV show, is situated 330 miles away from South Shields, where the Confederation of British Industry took place.

WALES

Our agreement with Plaid Cymru will help deliver a radical socialist agenda

Mick Antoniw

Welsh Labour Party

The Welsh parliament elections delivered an equal best ever result for Welsh Labour. Contrary to all expectations, and in sharp contrast to local elections in many parts of England, Welsh Labour increased the number of seats held to 30, exactly half the total in the Senedd, enabling it to form another Welsh Labour government.

Labour has now been in power in Wales for over 20 years and for the entirety of devolution. It is a remarkable success story and Mark Drakeford has become the most well-known and popular Welsh politician in recent generations. With an electoral system consisting of 40 constituency seats elected by first-past-the-post and a further 20 seats elected via a proportional top-up system (as is also the case in Scotland), it is virtually impossible for a political party to win an outright majority.

Welsh Labour has won every election since 1999 but has always depended on support from another political party in order to govern. This has normally been in the form of some sort of partnership agreement with the Lib Dems or, as in 2007 when Labour went down to 26 seats, a formal ‘One Wales’ coalition with Plaid Cymru – and the compact with them in 2016 that secured a Labour First Minister with an agreed policy and legislative programme for 18 months.

It should therefore come as no surprise that cooperation talks with Plaid Cymru have taken place and have now delivered an agreement. It is not a coalition and it is very different to the agreement between the SNP in Scotland and the Greens, where they have been given two ministerial positions. There will be no Plaid Cymru ministers.

Instead, it is a cooperation agreement, based on the common policy commitments of both Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru, to work together for the people of Wales to deliver on the progressive policies both parties have promised in their manifestoes. It will be facilitated by access to the civil service in appropriate areas, joint working and the appointment by the First Minister of two special advisers to assist. It will be a different way of working collaboratively on the areas of the agreement, but formal portfolio responsibilities will remain with government ministers.

Political cooperation in Wales has changed over the past two decades, and for the better. When the people of Wales voted a quarter of a century ago for self government, they were promised a new type of progressive politics – a democracy and government that would work inclusively and cooperatively. This agreement is the latest fulfilment of this progressive political transition.

During the Tony Blair years, Welsh Labour adopted a ‘clear red water’ identity to distinguish its more overtly socialist agenda from the direction of the party in England. The manifesto on which Welsh Labour was elected in May of this year is no less progressive and has continued the tradition of a radical Welsh socialist agenda on issues attuned with the aspiration and identity of Welsh communities, many of whom have suffered from Tory austerity and welfare cuts and are also still recovering from the impact of the Tory policies of the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher and deindustrialisation.

The agreement builds on that manifesto and will enable it to be delivered, as it will for parts of the Plaid Cymru manifesto. It commits to working together to deliver a number of radical policies that would take pride of place in any Labour manifesto. Extending free school meals to all primary school pupils with the commitment that no child should go hungry. Extending childcare to all two-year-olds and strengthening  Welsh medium childcare. Joint work will be undertaken to establish a national care service, free at the point of need, with progress towards a better integrated health and social care system and work towards parity of recognition and reward of health and care workers.

Action will be taken to address the proliferation of second homes and the issue of unaffordable housing with a commitment to a white paper to establish a right to adequate housing, fair rents and an end to homelessness. As well as the policy agenda, the agreement will facilitate the Welsh government’s own legislative programme in these and other areas and, importantly, will enable a smooth three-year budgetary process.

The alternative is a government that would otherwise have to devote much of its time to negotiating and arguing, line by line, all its key legislation and a budgetary process where there could be no certainty from one year to the next.

At a time when devolution is under assault from a right-wing centralising government and a three-year austerity financial settlement, which will leave Wales £3bn worse off in real terms by 2024 than it was in 2010, the agreement will enable the Welsh government and the Senedd to focus on protecting and improving services, tackling poverty and improving the quality of life of our communities. It will provide an example of progressive government and an alternative to the sleazy, right-wing politics of the Tories in Westminster.

The agreement does not end scrutiny and challenge to the Welsh government. That will continue. Welsh Labour will continue with its other manifesto commitments in respect of radical electoral reform, public ownership of Welsh railways, the constitutional commission that has been set up, the social partnership bill and our commitment to legislate in areas of clean air, single use plastic and environmental protection.

The agreement will require trust and goodwill from both parties, and it will not always be easy. The temptation for both to resort to the political comfort of division and conflict is always there. But, as we work together to get through the pandemic, seek to rebuild our economy and deliver social justice, the prize is too great to fail. The overwhelming endorsement of the Welsh Labour executive committee and the national executive of Plaid Cymru is confirmation of this. We know we can make this work. We have done it before and we can do it again.

As the only current bastion of Labour parliamentary government in the UK, this agreement to work together, to take Wales forward, is the best and most effective way of delivering the progressive policies and services the people expect from a Welsh Labour government.

Mick Antoniw

Mick Antoniw is the Welsh parliament member for Pontypridd and chair of the legislation, justice and constitution committee of the Welsh parliament.

Giant 'toothed' birds flew over Antarctica 40 million to 50 million years ago


Peter A. Kloess, Doctoral Candidate, Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley
Sun, November 21, 2021, 

Picture Antarctica today and what comes to mind? Large ice floes bobbing in the Southern Ocean? Maybe a remote outpost populated with scientists from around the world? Or perhaps colonies of penguins puttering amid vast open tracts of snow?

Fossils from Seymour Island, just off the Antarctic Peninsula, are painting a very different picture of what Antarctica looked like 40 to 50 million years ago – a time when the ecosystem was lusher and more diverse. Fossils of frogs and plants such as ferns and conifers indicate Seymour Island was much warmer and less icy, while fossil remains from marsupials and distant relatives of armadillos and anteaters hint at the previous connections between Antarctica and other continents in the Southern Hemisphere.

There were also birds. Penguins were present then, as they are now, but fossil relatives of ducks, falcons and albatrosses have also been found in Antarctica. My colleagues and I published an article in 2020 revealing new information about the fossil group that would have dwarfed all the other birds on Seymour Island: the pelagornithids, or “bony-toothed” birds.

Giants of the sky

As their name suggests, these ancient birds had sharp, bony spikes protruding from sawlike jaws. Resembling teeth, these spikes would have helped them catch squid or fish. We also studied another remarkable feature of the pelagornithids – their imposing size.

The largest flying bird alive today is the wandering albatross, which has a wingspan that reaches 11 ½ feet. The Antarctic pelagornithids fossils we studied have a wingspan nearly double that – about 21 feet across. If you tipped a two-story building on its side, that’s about 20 feet.

Across Earth’s history, very few groups of vertebrates have achieved powered flight – and only two reached truly giant sizes: birds and a group of reptiles called pterosaurs.

A model of an enormous prehistoric bird is mounted outdoor in the middle of a river. The wingspan reaches from bank to bank.

Pterosaurs ruled the skies during the Mesozoic Era (252 million to 66 million years ago), the same period that dinosaurs roamed the planet, and they reached hard-to-believe dimensions. Quetzalcoatlus stood 16 feet tall and had a colossal 33-foot wingspan.
Birds get their opportunity

Birds originated while dinosaurs and pterosaurs were still roaming the planet. But when an asteroid struck the Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago, dinosaurs and pterosaurs both perished. Some select birds survived, though. These survivors diversified into the thousands of bird species alive today. Pelagornithids evolved in the period right after dinosaur and pterosaur extinction, when competition for food was lessened.

The earliest pelagornithid remains, recovered from 62-million-year-old sediments in New Zealand, were about the size of modern gulls. The first giant pelagornithids, the ones in our study, took flight over Antarctica about 10 million years later, in a period called the Eocene Epoch (56 million to 33.9 million years ago). In addition to these specimens, fossilized remains from other pelagornithids have been found on every continent.

Pelagornithids lasted for about 60 million years before going extinct just before the Pleistocene Epoch (2.5 million to 11,700 years ago). No one knows exactly why, though, because few fossil records have been recovered from the period at the end of their reign. Some paleontologists cite climate change as a possible factor.
Piecing it together

The fossils we studied are fragments of whole bones collected by paleontologists from the University of California at Riverside in the 1980s. In 2003, the specimens were transferred to Berkeley, where they now reside in the University of California Museum of Paleontology.

There isn’t enough material from Antarctica to rebuild an entire skeleton, but by comparing the fossil fragments with similar elements from more complete individuals, we were able to assess their size.

Photo of a fossil fragment of a jawbone section that has worn toothlike projections. Line drawing around it illustrates where in the jaw it would have fit.

We estimate the pelagornithid’s skull would have been about 2 feet long. A fragment of one bird’s lower jaw preserves some of the “pseudoteeth” that would have each measured up to an inch tall. The spacing of those “teeth” and other measurements of the jaw show this fragment came from an individual as big as, if not bigger than, the largest known pelagornithids.

Further evidence of the size of these Antarctic birds comes from a second pelagornithid fossil, from a different location on Seymour Island. A section of a foot bone, called a tarsometatarsus, is the largest specimen known for the entire extinct group.

These pelagornithid fossil findings emphasize the importance of natural history collections. Successful field expeditions result in a wealth of material brought back to a museum or repository – but the time required to prepare, study and publish on fossils means these institutions typically hold many more specimens than they can display. Important discoveries can be made by collecting specimens on expeditions in remote locations, no doubt. But equally important discoveries can be made by simply processing the backlog of specimens already on hand.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Peter A. Kloess, University of California, Berkeley.

Read more:

Ancient bird skull found in amber was tiny predator in the time of giant dinosaurs


What makes some species more likely to go extinct?


Emperor Penguins could march to extinction if nations fail to halt climate change

Peter A. Kloess does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Electric vehicles won't save us — we need to get rid of cars completely


Paris Marx
Sat., November 20, 2021

Electrifying heavy cars like trucks and SUVs causes other issues like air pollution and traffic deaths.Insider


World leaders are focusing on electric vehicles to reduce emissions and combat the climate crisis.


But electrifying vehicles is simply not enough — especially given their large production footprint.


To really make a difference, we need smaller cars, less cars, and more transportation alternatives.


Paris Marx is the host of the Tech Won't Save Us podcast and author of the forthcoming book, Road to Nowhere, about the problems with Silicon Valley's future of transportation.

This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.

Climate change is happening now. Wildfires are getting worse, flooding more common, hurricanes more powerful, and heat waves more deadly. Yet when world leaders met in Glasgow earlier this month, their proposals still had the world on track for 2.4 degrees Celsius of warming — far above the 1.5-degree target. Governments aren't doing enough, but they are beginning to take action, and many are focusing on the opportunity offered by electric vehicles.

Transportation accounts for 29% of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, and more than half of that comes from passenger vehicles. Since taking office in January, the Biden administration has taken steps toward electrification, but also failed to sign onto a pledge announced at COP26 to phase out fossil-fuel vehicles by 2040.

Electric vehicles are one piece of a strategy to slash transport emissions, but they tend to receive far more attention than proposals to cut car use. The electrification of transportation is essential — there is no doubt about that — but just replacing every personal vehicle with a battery-powered equivalent will produce an environmental disaster of its own. Such a strategy also denies us the opportunity to rethink a near-century of misguided auto-oriented city planning.

SUVs make the problem worse

Since the 1990s, SUVs have gone from being a niche vehicle segment to nearly half of new vehicle sales in the United States. When you add in vans and pickup trucks, that number rises to more than 70% of the market. These large vehicles now dominate North American roads, despite the fact that they're at least twice as likely to kill pedestrians, have contributed to a 30% increase in pedestrian deaths from 2000 to 2019, and make it harder to cut the carbon emitted from transportation.

While fuel economy standards have improved over time, the shift from sedans to SUVs and trucks has partially offset the emissions reductions that should have accompanied those improvements. Plus, when you look at the global picture, SUV sales have also taken off to such a degree that they were the second largest contributor to the increase in global emissions from 2010 to 2018. The commonly stated solution to this problem is not to address the growing size of vehicles or the mass ownership of personal vehicles of any kind, but simply to electrify them. That isn't good enough.

The focus on tailpipe emissions misses the bigger picture, and at a moment when we can see the complex, global nature of supply chains in our everyday lives, we need to think beyond such a limited framing of electric vehicles' environmental impact.

For example, particulate matter created from tire, brake, and road wear, as well as the dust kicked up by cars on the road, does not fuel climate change, but it does create air pollution that's harmful to human health. In the United States, these pollutants are responsible for about 53,000 premature deaths each year, and heavier electric vehicles like SUVs and trucks could actually generate more particulate matter than lighter, non-electric cars.

Yet while health effects are important, the biggest concern is the minerals that are required to make the batteries that power electric vehicles and the mining that has to happen to extract them. It's a reality that seriously dirties their green image, and shows the "zero emissions" branding simply isn't accurate.

The mining behind electric vehicles

Ahead of COP26, the International Energy Agency released its latest World Energy Outlook that estimated achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 will require six times more minerals by mid-century than is necessary today. Yet the majority of those minerals are required for electric vehicles and storage, whose mineral demand is projected to increase by "well over 50 times by 2050" as the demand for batteries to power them grows substantially. As a result, the United States is assessing its own mineral supply chains and working with Canada to expand mining activities to supply battery makers. But all that mining comes with consequences.

In North America, mining activities tend to be located near rural communities or Indigenous lands where the mines face growing opposition over their environmental impacts and the threat they pose to the lives and livelihoods of locals. Canada also isn't free of such concerns; lithium mines in Quebec have already been responsible for environmental accidents, and Indigenous opposition to mining projects is growing.

That's because these mines harm the surrounding environment, use excess amounts of water, and create significant amounts of waste, but they also have consequences for workers and nearby communities who often suffer from much higher rates of illness. In some countries, a more organized opposition to mining activities is forming, including groups in Latin America that call it a form of green extractivism where people and ecosystems are sacrificed in the name of the climate crisis. As plans to extract more minerals escalate, the backlash will only grow, both at home and abroad.

We need to reduce car use

Electric vehicles tend to be more environmentally friendly than those powered by gas or diesel, but they still have a significant footprint of their own that primarily occurs in the production stage rather than during their use. As long as an electric vehicle replaces all the trips a conventional vehicle might take, it will typically produce fewer emissions over its lifetime within a few years. But we need to ensure we're not being misled by industry players that have an incentive to greenwash products that don't do nearly enough to address the problem.

On top of the issues with mining and large vehicle pollution, continuing to have communities built around the assumption that everyone will drive simply isn't sustainable. The automotive industry wants us to replace the vehicle fleet with battery-powered alternatives because they'll make a lot of money in the process, but it's not the best path for the environment, nor for our communities.

As leaders at COP26 were focused on electric vehicles, a network of mayors and the International Transport Workers' Federation released a report arguing that public transit use needs to double by 2030 in order to meet emissions targets. Making transit available within a 10-minute walk of people's homes would not only encourage its use and create tens of millions of jobs, but could begin to transform our relationship to mobility.

There was a moment during the pandemic where it felt that change was not only possible, but was happening in front of our very eyes. Streets were closed to vehicles so people had space to move, and temporary bike lanes were thrown up to encourage cycling. In some cities, those efforts were expanded as the worst of the pandemic lifted so people could leave their cars at home and commit to using bikes or transit. But in other cities, the push to go "back to normal" swept away those spaces, and the SUVs returned.

We should seize this opportunity to challenge the past century of auto-oriented planning and emphasize walking, cycling, and transit use over driving. Not only would people's quality of life improve, but if we're serious about taking on the climate crisis, we need to significantly reduce the number of cars and SUVs on the road — regardless of what powers them.

Sinopec Unveils New Tech For Low-Carbon Petrochemical Production

Editor OilPrice.com
Sat, November 20, 2021,

China's Sinopec has developed a steam-cracking technology to convert oil directly into high-demand petrochemical products such as ethylene and propylene, cutting costs and production times as well as significantly reducing carbon emissions. Could this be the low-carbon answer to petrochemical production, as the global need for these products keeps increasing even as demand for crude wanes?

The China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation, or Sinopec, announced this month that is has successfully tested its project, the "Technological Development and Industrial Application of Light Crude Oil Cracking into Ethylene". Through the ‘crude to chemicals’ development, Sinopec hopes to expand China’s petrochemical industry as well as achieving low-carbon operations objectives. This is the first example of successful steam cracking technology in China, with ExxonMobil being the only company in the world to have accomplished the industrial application of steam-cracking technology. Sinopec is currently in the process of applying for domestic and international patents for the technology.

Steam cracking works by skipping the standard crude oil refining process by instead converting the crude directly into chemical products, saving time and resources, and decreasing the release of carbon emissions from the method thanks to the reduced energy consumption required to fuel the process. The new technology is expected to produce almost 500,000 tonnes of chemical products, 400,000 tonnes of which are high-value ethylene, propylene, light aromatics, and hydrogen, from 1 million tonnes of crude oil.

But it’s not just China that is making advances in the crude to chemicals area, as Saudi’s Aramco has also outlined similar plans for converting crude oil to light olefins, such as ethylene and propylene, using a single-reactor system instead of steam cracking. Aramco is working with researchers from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) to develop the technology, investing heavily in the project as demand for petrochemicals is expected to continue rising while demand for traditional fuel decreases in the face of renewable energy developments. Petrochemicals could provide a much-needed use for crude in a world that’s slowly turning its back on fossil fuels.

KAUST Professor of Chemical Engineering and Director of the KAUST Catalysis Centre, Jorge Gascon explains the development. "Altogether, our results demonstrate that the search for alternative reactor-engineering concepts, when accompanied by complementary multifunctional catalyst development, is worth exploring for process intensification." "This new process has the potential to reduce the need for distillation and steam cracking units," he added.

As part of its aim for net-zero carbon emissions by 2060, Saudi Arabia hopes to use carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology as well as low-carbon oil production to support the ongoing expansion of its oil and gas industry. Saudi’s petrochemical company Sabic hopes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2030, on 2018 figures. The development of CCS technology to convert carbon into grey hydrogen, as well as the development of cleaner green hydrogen projects, will support this objective.

Thailand is also making strides in its low-carbon petrochemical development. This month, PTT Global Chemical (PTTGC), the country’s largest petrochemical company, announced plans to invest up to $25 billion to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, hoping to make emissions reductions of 20 percent by 2030.

PTTGC will no longer be building new plants in Thailand but will focus on de-bottlenecking existing operations, enhancing digital technology across the firm, and reducing feedstock consumption to improve output. PTTGC is already investing in CCS technology but greater funding towards new crude to chemical technologies could significantly improve the company’s petrochemical operations while supporting its goal of net-zero.

With analysts predicting petrochemicals will be the big winner in the coming decades, particularly when it comes to the ongoing use of fossil fuels, it’s no surprise several countries are competing for their piece of the pie. Coming out the other side of oil’s toughest year, it surprised many to see that petrochemical company revenues bounced back in the third and fourth quarters of 2020, going on to make profits throughout 2021. This is largely because of the increased demand for consumer packaging, cleaning and hygiene products, and personal protective equipment, requiring ethylene, polyethylene, and polypropylene as part of the manufacturing processes.

Thanks to an increased demand for products requiring petrochemicals, including industrial applications such as construction, automotive, aviation, food, electrical, paint and coatings, and paper, the global petrochemical market could achieve a CAGR of 5.1 percent between 2021 and 2030. The current value of the worldwide petrochemical market was estimated at around $452.9 billion in 2020, a figure that could increase to $729 billion by 2030 if the current trend continues.

With a strong outlook for the petrochemical market and the potential to develop low-carbon petrochemical production methods, on top of low-carbon oil production supported by CCS technologies, energy firms and governments around the world are racing to establish a strong, low-carbon petrochemical portfolio to position themselves securely in the international market as demand climbs.

By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com